Major limitation in acoustic levitation, the tendency of multiple levitated particles to collapse into a clump in mid-air (acoustic collapse), is solved
https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/1108105 "sound scattered off them creates attractive forces, causing them to snap together into single clump... introducing/ tuning electric charge to particles leverages electrostatic repulsion to keep particles separated, achieving stable configurations ranging from completely separated systems to fully collapsed ones, and hybrids in between, including non-reciprocal: particle arrangements that spontaneously rotate/ pairs of particles that chase each other... stable mid-air manipulation: material science, micro- robotics/ engineering" Related: Narrow ultrasonic beam enables stable 3D levitation six times farther than before https://phys.org/news/2026-08-narrow-ultrasonic-enables-stable-3d.html